ARTICLES ABOUT GLOBAL DELIVERY MODEL BY DATE - PAGE 3

BANGALORE: Global oilfield and information services company Schlumberger and IT giant Infosys on Wednesday announced jointly forming a global alliance to provide comprehensive information management solutions that integrate upstream technical and business processes for oil and gas companies. The alliance would address a wide array of solutions, primarily focused on the integration of Exploration and Production (E and P) petro-technical data and applications, including unstructured data, with financial and human resources back-end systems, in order to streamline operational and strategic business decision making processes, a company statement said.

Integrated technology and solutions provider iGATE Global Solutions enables clients to optimise business through a combination of process investment strategies, technology leverage, business process outsourcing and provisioning. Mohan Sekhar, member of the board, and chief delivery officer, iGATE, spoke about the global delivery model and innovative delivery models being the only differentiator in a commoditised software services industry. Excerpts: The global delivery model (GDM)

BANGALORE: As the global business process outsourcing industry is undergoing a mid-life crisis, Indian BPO suppliers will have to change their business model and the investment strategy for survival, a top research expert said today. "To build critical mass and sustainable differentiation, they (Indian BPO suppliers) will have to say no to clients and focus on specific processes and verticals," said John C McCarthy, Vice-President, Asia Pacific Research, Forrester Research, Inc. Addressing NASSCOM's ITeS-BPO Strategy Summit 2006 here, he said Indian BPO suppliers can no longer be a jack of all trades and masters of none.

Two years after its split with HCL in 2003, Texas-based Perot Systems' India operations have become the cornerstone of its global delivery model of integrated IT, BPO and consulting solutions. The company's recent expansion and recruitment plans are in line with its long-term growth strategies in India. Among some of the high-profile recruits were Padma Ravichander, who recently took over as MD of the company's global applications solutions division. She spoke with Sobha Menon about the company's plans and the opportunities that she sees in India.

MUMBAI: Indian IT companies are giants in their own right with quite a few having revenues of more than a billion dollars. But compared with the global biggies — EDS, Accenture, Perot, Computer Sciences — Indian IT companies are mere pygmies. And in IT, as perhaps in everything else, brand and size matter considerably. For instance, the smaller Indian IT companies have a tough time competing with the bigger ones. But big Indian IT companies face the same difficulty in competing with the global giants like IBM, Unisys.

BANGALORE: In his rare public comments involving a rival, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji on Friday said his company's organisation structure was "superior" to that of Infosys Technologies. "I think, our structure is superior to the Infosys global delivery model", Premji told reporter said in response to a question on how Wipro's organisation structure compared with that of Infosys' global delivery model. "Frankly, I have not fully understood the Infosys global delivery model.

PUNE: Like parent, like offspring. Progeon, the business process outsourcing (BPO) arm of Infosys, wants to replicate the parent's global delivery model. "Today, we are 100% off shore. Over the next few years, we want to move to Infosys' 70:30 model, of being 70% off site and 30% on site. Yes, we are bidding for some deals like this and it could happen this year," Akshaya Bhargava, MD and CEO of Progeon, said. This is part of Progeon's change of strategy, as it comes up against the likes of Accenture, which can offer such a seamless model and even as it seeks a separate positioning for the country's fast growing BPO industry.

LONDON: Despite challenges from China, the Philippines and Eastern Europe, India still has an overwhelming advantage in IT offshoring, according to Wipro chairman Azim Premji. "Areas such as China, Eastern Europe and the Philippines are becoming major players in IT offshoring but India still has an overwhelming advantage because of the support of the government and the country's huge talent pool," Premji said in an interview published in The Independent on Sunday. Wipro benefits from being able to recruit from the top 50,000 engineering graduates turned out from Indian universities and colleges each year, he said.

MUMBAI: IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services and Microsoft Corporation on Wednesday entered into a global services partnership, under which the two would jointly help in enhancing value of their IT investments. Under the deal, TCS would combine its global delivery model and software quality assurance with Microsoft's platform innovation, besides extending the alliance to several other initiatives, TCS chairman and managing director S Ramadorai said in a release here.

In the 70's it was outsourcing your work to domestic vendors in the local market, in 90's it was offshoring to a low cost centre in India or elsewhere. And now comes the concept of producing a truly global product/service with collaboration from various centres all over the world. Yes, this is the age of Global delivery model of outsourcing. Call it BPO part II, where the services are harnessed from many , not one centre. Now the call centre may be based in Gurgaon, the back-end software developed in Manila while manufacturing takes place in Shanghai.